Spiro Agnew

Spiro Agnew was born to a Greek immigrant father and an American-born mother of Irish and English descent. While his last name might sound vaguely Hebraic to the untrained ear, there's not a whisper of Jewish heritage in his family tree. He was, to put it plainly, a thoroughly gentile fellow, which didn't stop a certain segment of the population from assuming otherwise for reasons best left to Freudian analysis.

Agnew, who served under President Richard Nixon, distinguished himself less by his policies and more by his colorful, often alliterative, attacks on the media and war protestors, whom he famously dubbed "nattering nabobs of negativism." It was a golden age for sound bites, if not for political ethics.

His tenure as Vice President ended abruptly in 1973 when he pleaded no contest to a charge of tax evasion, stemming from a long-running corruption scandal. He resigned from office, becoming the first and only U.S. Vice President to do so due to criminal charges. While his fall from grace was spectacular, it offered no kvell-worthy moments for the Jewish people, unless schadenfreude counts as nachas.